


Poisons

by silverr



Category: Original Work
Genre: Assassins, Background Misogyny, Case Fic, Dubious Consent, Embedded Images Tagged with Alt Text, Epistolary, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, Fantasy Forensics, Fate & Destiny, Female Friendship, Fuck Or Die, Hidden Depths, Lovers to Friends, Magic and Science, Mind Games, Poison, Prophecy, Rated For That One Scene (okay maybe two), Romance, Shapeshifting, Strangers to Lovers, Threat of Bodily Harm, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-18 16:48:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16122698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverr/pseuds/silverr
Summary: A physician is asked by a friend to help her investigate why powerful men in a far-off androcracy are falling ill and disappearing.  The two women find cruelty and deceit within the oppressive society, but one of them might also find something more.Note: theExplicitrating is based on two scenes (one smutty, one with threats of bodily harm) integral to the plot; the rest of the story is T (if that).Set in the same general universe asThe Taitaja, but knowledge of the previous story is not required.





	1. Physician and Poisoner

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Selden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selden/gifts).



> Beta by **nenya_kanadka.**
> 
> (Originally posted as a single chapter, now split into 3 for easier reading.)

.

.

.

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###### The Grand Ballroom

There was a permit attached to the underside of the tabard I'd been given when I'd entered the palace. Signed by Mera and Sir Lahettilas, the permit summed me up and apparently gave me permission to exist in Kaddiswal. _Taitaja Reed. ID 4893203 (temporary). Kyraxos Greenwarden. Expiration unknown._ Beneath this, in small letters, was _Welcome to Kaddiswal._

Oh yes. Who wouldn't feel welcome after that?

I had a good view of the ballroom from the balcony, but the sight didn't impress me. The throng of military officers and government officials below looked like an expanse of dried mud. It wasn't a good brown, either, not like the warm brown of eyes and skin and polished wood; no, Kaddiswali brown, the color of the uniforms and the banners and the tabard, was horrible, the drab grayish-brown of putrid flesh or half-rotted dead stalks of broadleaf grass.

Fortunately, spots of color broke the monotony of suits and uniforms. I saw a woman with an elaborate cage on her head, the live birds inside apparently accustomed to clamor. Another woman, her dark green gown contrasting with skin tinted an unnaturally deep pink, evoked a flower. A third was dressed as a fire-peacock, with a long train of red and violet feathers; others, too far away for the details of their costumes to be seen, suggested waterfalls or sparkling clouds.  

"Reed!" A red-haired woman in a dark grey Protector's tunic had climbed the stairs to the balcony. "I wasn't expecting you so soon!"

"After sending me a tantalizing letter like that? I couldn't get here fast enough." I grinned. "So do I call you Special Task Force Leader now? Or Ambassador? Or just boss?"

"Ha! Please don't call me any of those. Mera will do."  Her hair was streaked with gray that hadn't been there the last time I'd seen her, but her kind, honest face hadn't changed. She said as she hugged me, "Oh, how _good_ it is to see you! There's not a single woman in the royal guard here or in the investigative service, can you believe it? All they can give me to work with are peachface boys and vainglories. So tiresome."

"I empathize. I've been here an hour, and I already miss Kyraxos." I gestured to the ballroom. "So… mysterious illnesses, and some deaths, and the doctors here don't know what's causing it?"

"The smart ones are pretending not to," Mera said quietly. "They claim the disease mystifies them. A few insist that there must be magical augmentation involved, and say such factors are beyond their ability to counteract."

"Avoiding responsibility for the deaths. No wonder they invited us in: as non-Kaddiswalis we're easier to blame." I shook my head. "And here I thought you loved me for my forensic expertise."

"I do," Mera said. "If anyone can help me untangle what's going on here, it's you."

"Sounds ominous."

She clasped her hands and leaned on the rail, watching the crowd for a few beats. "So here's what _wasn't_ in the letter I sent to you. First, whatever is happening here strikes fast. One day the victim is fine, the next, they're gone. The official story is always that they've taken ill and have left the court to recuperate elsewhere. A few make it home. Most don't."

"What, they just disappear? How many times has that happened?" Already I was sifting the possibilities.

"Five very clear-cut cases in the past year. At least thirty more that we're still looking at. Tracing all the comings and goings in a court this big takes time."

"I can imagine. There must be _thousands_ of people in the palace alone, and when you factor in all the visitors that must have passed through each year—"

"No, that's just it," Mera said. "So far everyone—Kaddiswali or not—who's been affected has been someone with power or influence. I haven't found any mention of petitioners or guards or cooks being stricken, and there's nothing in outlying villages or towns."

"Power and influence," I said. "In other words, all men."

Mera gave me a look and a half shrug that said _Of course._

"No one's looked into this before now?"

Mera shook her head. "I can't tell. They're not very forthcoming with information."

I lowered my voice and moved closer to Mera. "The obvious answer is that they have assassins at work, and yet they want us to 'solve" it?" I could already see that, for whatever reason, we'd been dumped into a diplomatic nightmare.

"And yet," Mera repeated with a wry smile. "All we can do, is do our best," she said, "and be prepared for the Kaddiswalis to find some way to take offense no matter what we do."

It was utterly ridiculous, but that made me determined to solve the mystery just to spite them. "So for now I should pretend that there's a disease here that strikes only the rich, but not their servants," I said, "even though servants wash dishes and bedding, remove waste, clean and dress wounds, and get sneezed on?"

"Yes."

I sighed. "So what's the fallout from these deaths?"

"As you'd expect when diplomats and ministers and patriarchs are taken out of play. Treaties are delayed. Rulings are postponed. Marriages between powerful families are called off."

"Who benefits?"

"No one consistently," she said, " although it's possible I haven't yet found the common thread yet. That's the problem with masterminds: their plans are so intricate that they never do the obvious thing. Unless that's part of a plan to throw pursuers off."

"Or maybe there isn't a mastermind," I suggested. "Maybe what you're taking as subtlety are just inconsistent results. The mistakes of someone who's not very good at the game?"

Mera nodded. "Fair enough. Or maybe there really is a disease that just _happens_ to strike a random luminary every eleven days."

An idea occurred to me. "Maybe whoever's behind it isn't trying for advantage? Maybe their intent is simply to stir up trouble? Give Kaddiswal a pretext to accuse and invade their neighbors?"

"Could be. We'll see once the illness or assassin strikes again."

I turned to face her. "Why wait? I ought to be able to make a start by examining the bodies of the previous victims."

"Officially," Mera said dryly, "there _were_ no previous victims."

"Oh. I see. Wonderful. I rushed here to do nothing."

"I didn't say that," Mera said, patting my hand as she turned away from the railing. "Take the time to get your infirmary set up. I've requisitioned a pair of rooms in the Third Terrace that I'm hoping will be suitable. What did you bring with you?"

"I always carry the essentials," I said, lifting the edge of the brown brocade Kaddiswali tabard to show Mera the herb apron I wore underneath. "My laboratory equipment and _rohto_ supplies are outside in Matkahuolto's wagon. If you can spare a few of your vainglories to help me carry the crates in, I can start setting up right now."

"Not tonight," Mera said. "It's late, and you've had a long day of travel. Let's just mingle with the denizens," Mera said. "Maybe starting with those two?" She nodded at the stairs.

Two young women were coming into view. The first one was slathered in blue-green body paint overlaid with strips of nearly transparent fabric. Behind her was the woman with the flower costume.

As they approached I became more and more impressed with the second woman's appearance. What I had taken for hair was actually an artfully constructed headdress of glossy leaves, red-black except for a cluster on one side frosted white. The tinting of her skin wasn't uniform, either. Pale pink and yellow  lines radiated out from the bridge of her wide, delicate nose, highlighting the contours of her face. Her full lips were tinted pale green, and a dark oil in her eyes whorled lazily each time she blinked. Her gown, floor-length and full-skirted below a deep V, was made of overlapping layers of sheer dark green fabric, spotted with pale yellow. The overall effect was of a exotic bloom in a sun-dappled clearing.

I must have been gaping and staring without knowing it, for Mera took me by the elbow and said, "Lady Salaisuus, Lady Viha, allow me to introduce Taitaja Reed."

"Taitaja. A lovely name," the flower—Lady Salaisuus—said in a soft contralto.

Before I could respond Lady Viha laughed. "Silly Salai, Taitaja isn't her name, it's her profession. She's a flower witch from Kyraxos."

"Witch?" Lady Salaisuus asked, frowning slightly.

I noticed that she hadn't included perfume in her floral theme; it was a welcome omission. "Yes, I am trained in a herb-based healing art," I said, almost laughing at how breathless I was. I hadn't felt attracted to anyone in years, but Lady Salainuus was like no one I'd ever met at home. "I am also a forensicist."

"And what does your healing art involve?" Lady Salaisuus asked.

"I can hold a piece from a particular plant in my hand, and channel its healing properties into a patient."

"How extraordinary," She tilted her head gracefully to one side, making the leaves of her headdress rustle. There was a flash of pale green between her lips, so unexpected that it took me a moment to realize that it had to have been the tip of her tongue. Dedication, to go that far with her dyes. "You must be a marvelous gardener, Reed, with a very skillful touch."

This last word had a subtle emphasis, although I wasn't sure if I was reading too much into it. "The Grand Botanist wouldn't agree. I'm an adequate gardener at best. Though I rarely kill anything." I was beginning to blush.

"I admire the gracefulness of reeds," Lady Salaisuus said, "and envy their ability to bend so far without breaking."

Lady Viha, apparently displeased by the length of time she hadn't been the center of attention, asked Mera, "Has Reed met the king yet? If not, I can perform an introduction. He always makes time for me."

"Thank you. We were advised to wait for a summons," Mera said. Her eyes flicked up and down over Viha's costume. "Pardon me for asking, Lady Viha, but what are you meant to be?"

Lady Viha held her arms out. "Isn't it obvious? I'm a water spirit."

"Of course."

There was awkward silence for a few beats. I was just about to ask Lady Salaisuus something silly, such as what her preferred form of address was, when there was a muffled scream from below us.

.

A grey-haired man in a dark suit adorned with military medals lay on the floor of the Grand Ballroom, the dancers backing away from him in an ever-widening circle.

"That looks like General Zamura," Lady Viha said as we raced down the steps. "Collapsed under the weight of his medals, no doubt."

Mera shot her an annoyed look.

The general's breathing was labored, his pulse erratic, and his skin pale and clammy. I pulled back an eyelid, and was startled to see his pupils contracted to pinpoints. I checked his hands and neck for puncture wounds: none were visible, although there was a reddish blotch at the nape of his neck.

"Take off his boots," I ordered. "Check for insect or snake bites."

"What's wrong with him?" Lady Salaisuus asked delicately.

"It's possible he's been poisoned," I said.

.

Once Zamura was stabilized,  Mera went to the wall next to the stairs and opened a beautifully carved panel that turned out to be the door to a small reception room. "Please wait here."

I took the nearest armchair.  Lady Salaisuus and Lady Viha seated themselves on divans.

"Is it safe to move him to your infirmary?" Mera asked me.

I nodded.

"Do you want a sample?"

I nodded again, and Mera turned and went back to the ballroom. I heard her sending someone off for a stretcher, assigning others to bring in my supplies from the wagon outside the palace, and telling someone named Turha to get a small container.

"A sample?" Lady Viha asked. "Of what?"

"Of the mess," I said wearily. "For analysis." The herbs I'd been carrying were more for healing gross physical wounds, for stemming blood loss and mending skin and bone, than for defending against toxins, so it had taken some effort to weave them into something that Zamura's body could use.

"Ugh, how… " She shuddered. "What an _appalling_ task."

Lady Salaisuus, who had seated herself so regally that the folds of her gown fell into perfect, artful folds—though I suppose that was mostly due to her dressmaker—was watching me with a look I couldn't quite interpret. Curiosity? Amusement? Respect?

"Do you have a question, Lady Salaisuus?" I asked. I shouldn't resent her for knowing she was ethereal and otherworldly, or for making me wonder what I'd see if I peeled back the leaves of her gown. Would she be pink all over?

"Salai is fine," she replied with a glance at Lady Viha. "I've become accustomed to the pruning." Then she folded her hands— gloved to match her rose-colored skin, they had previously been hidden by the long, trumpet-lily sleeves of her gown—and asked, "What happens now?"

"I will identify what made General Zamura ill," I said.

"You said it was poison."

Lady Viha stood and went to the sideboard. "I need a drink."

"Is talking tiring for you?" Salai asked me.

I wasn't sure whether she was teasing me or trying to be thoughtful, but either way I decided it was sweet. "No," I said, shifting in the overly-soft chair. "Poison is one possibility, the most likely one, but we won't knew for certain until I can do some tests."

"What will you do if you find it's poison?" Viha asked. She sounded irritated, which was silly. I wasn't forcing her to participate in the conversation!

"I'll try to synthesize enough to study its properties," I said, covering my mouth for a yawn. "Knowing if it's slow or fast-acting will help Protector Mera and I work out when and how Zamura could have come into contact with it. That should tell us whether the dosing was accidental or deliberate."

Salai's eyes widened. "Could he have been poisoned while he was here this evening?" She put a gloved hand to her chest. "What if it was something he ate or drank? Everyone wanders around and takes what they want from whatever tray passes by! The poisoned food could have been swallowed by anyone!"

Before I could reply Lady Viha said firmly, "It can't have been anything he ate or drank." She downed whatever she'd poured into her goblet. "I don't know what you;re so worried about. You never eat or drink anything anyhow."

Salai twisted around to stare at Viha. "But what if General Zamura wasn't the target?" She seemed genuinely distressed now. "What if the murderer just wanted to kill someone at random?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Viha said, waving her free hand, "The king wouldn't allow a madman into the palace!"

"But—" Salai's voice sounded as if she were on the verge of tears.

Lady Viha bent down to take Salai's chin in her hand in a surprisingly tender gesture. "You're safe, Salai. If it _was_ an assassin, don't you think they have ways of making sure that the right person is struck down?"

I was doubly taken aback. Apparently there was more to Lady Viha than snobbery and social posturing. "I think it's too soon to talk about assassins and murderers and madmen," I said carefully. "It still could be something simple."

"I agree," Mera said as she came into the reception room.

Viha stepped back from Salai and gave me a sharp look, then turned back to re-fill her glass.

"And it may turn out to be something else," I added. "A hereditary disease of some sort, or a severe adverse reaction to a specific substance." Though of course, it would have to be something that only a dignitary would come in contact with, which ruled out quite a few things. I wondered if there were private gardens in the palace; such places could have lethal plants lurking.

"Whatever it is, Lady Salaisuus," Mera added firmly, "I can assure you, we'll figure it out, or catch whoever is doing this."

After Mera's assurances Viha led Salai from the room. As they left, I wondered how close they really were, and felt a little stab of envy.

.

The rooms that Mera had requisitioned for me were some ways from the Grand Ballroom. While the entire royal compound was well-protected by high walls, we passed through three cloistered walkways and carefully descended two wide stone staircases before reaching a corridor where four Kaddiswali guards stood watch outside a large door that was the elder sister of the one in the ballroom.

As we stepped into the darkened space Mera touched a small panel next to the door, and a crystal sculpture suspended from the ceiling began to glow.

The room was on a scale with the door. Large, high-ceilinged, with the excessive ornamentation found elsewhere in the palace. Elaborately carved moldings outlined mirrors and paintings of historical events. Heavy drapes, held back with gilt cords, framed windows that showed dim reflections of us against a background of night. The room's previous furnishings—overstuffed couches, tiny delicate tables, display stands with large vases, and a veritable herd of armless chairs and footstools —had been pushed against the left-hand wall. Three infirmary beds had been set up between the windows on the right-hand wall, and a long table wide table with a marble top and ridiculously gilt curved legs had been placed in the center of the room.

"Will this do?" Mera asked. "Do you want anything moved?"

"Not at the moment," I said, watching an endless parade of young men in brown uniforms carry in my crates. I took the jar containing General Zamura's sample from a discomfited looking  peachface and set it on the table, then supervised Zamura's transfer from stretcher to bed.

As they lifted Zamura I noticed that the splotch at the back of his neck had darkened, with the patch of hair above it now bleached nearly white. After checking his heartbeat and breathing rate as well as the size of his pupils, I turned his head carefully to one side, and saw that the pillow was already crosshatched with white hairs as brittle as wintergrass.

"Any change?" Mera asked.

"Still stable," I said as I collected as many of the white hairs as I could, then folded them into a slip of paper and tucked them into my apron. "If he makes it through the night he'll probably be fine."

"Good." Mera said. "Promise me to wait until morning to set up your equipment?"

I rubbed my hand over my face. "Sure."

"Let's go and see if they remembered to bring in a bed for you."

The door to the attached living quarters was far less ostentatious than the outer door had been.  Just enough light came in from the chandelier in the other room for me to see that that the single small room had none of the excesses of the main chamber.

That is, if you didn't count the bed. Large enough to sleep six, with a canopy held up by sculptured pillars of ironwork chains. The coverlet—stiff brocade in Kaddiswali brown, a color I was beginning to truly despise—was dominated by a huge beaded royal crest.

I pulled off the tabard and untied my apron, then sat on the corner of the bed and toed off my boots.

"I'm guessing this suite might have been used for concerts," Mera said, looking around and squinting at the chairs that had been stacked against the side walls to make room for the bed. "This probably was  where the musicians and other performers waited out of sight while the royal audience and guests assembled in the main room. At least it has an ablution alcove."

I let myself fall back onto the coverlet, and rubbed my hand over the encrusted surface of the crest. "Don't the Kaddiswalis _ever_ do anything simple?"

"No," Mera said with a laugh. "Sleep well. If you need anything, ask the guards posted in the hall. I'll turn the lights down in the infirmary as I leave."

I made some noise that I hoped would pass for acknowledgement, then rolled over and started to crawl toward the pillowed end of the bed. Hopefully the sheets were less smoother than the crest.

They were. Still ridiculous, of course, a slippery glossy fabric that made me long for the smooth soft linen sheets on my bed at home, but they would do.

It was so tempting to let myself drift off right there, face down and fully clothed, but I hadn't brought many things to wear and didn't want to have to wear a Kaddiswali uniform—which I was sure would be, what else, grey mud brown—the next day, so I pushed myself upright and started to undress.

I heard a small noise from the other room, and padded out to check.

Zamura was snoring arrhythmically. After checking his pulse and making sure that he wasn't having breathing issues, I turned to go back to the bed.

The dim light from the crystal in the ceiling glinted on the glass jar on the table, and though I knew that it didn't make sense, I picked it up,  carried it into the bedroom, and hid it beneath one of the stacks of chairs. If Zamura got up in the middle of the night and started flailing around, I didn't want him to break the jar and cut himself.

My irrational mission complete, I pulled off the rest of my clothes, slid between the outlandish sheets, and let myself fall into sleep.

.

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###### Morning in the infirmary

I woke to the sound of shouting. Male and female voices, and under them a steady,  reassuring counterpoint that I recognized as Mera's.

As I sat up I saw that the door between the bedroom and the infirmary had been closed—probably by Mera, bless her. I also realized that the light in the room came from a small window or ventilation grille high in the wall behind the head of the bed.

I dressed quickly and listened at the door for a moment. All I could hear now was Mera. It sounded as though she was reassuring someone, so I made myself as official-looking as I could by pulling on the horrible ugly tabard, then pushed open the door.

The former music room was filled with blinding light from the massive windows. Seven people stood around the general's now-empty bed. On one side an arrogant man whose profile suggested he was Zamura's son, an older woman dressed in a violet dress, and four guards in uniforms draped with violet sashes; on the other, Mera.

General Zamura, it seems, had disappeared during the night. No one knew where he was, a fact not accepted by the son and the woman I assumed was the general's wife. They were demanding his body be released to them immediately for funerary rites.

Mera was saying, with utter diplomacy, "I understand completely, but to our knowledge the general is not dead."

"Your knowledge is a liar," Zamura's son said coldly. "Do you deny that my father collapsed last night before being brought here?"

"I do not," Mera said. "He was tended to by Taitaja Reed."

They all looked at me. "General Zamura was stable and sleeping comfortably last night," I said.

"So you say," his son sneered.

"Yes, I do say." I folded my arms.

He looked furious, but after a moment he apparently decided that I was not worthy of even his contempt. He turned to Mera and said smugly, "A complaint and charge of murder and kidnapping will be lodged with the Kyraxos Consuli."

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask if he thought we'd kidnapped the General before or after we'd murdered him, but Mera gave me a warning look. "You must do as you see fit," she told the general's son.

He narrowed his eyes. "You will regret insulting the House of Zamura!"

And then he, his mother, and the violet sashes swept out.

For the next half hour I quietly unpacked my equipment crates and began to set up on the table while Mera grilled the peachfaces and vainglories about the previous night.

No, none of them had fallen asleep or left their post.

No, there had never been less than three of them awake at any one time.

No, they had not allowed anyone to enter the infirmary.

No, they had not seen anyone leave.

After a careful examination of the outer doors, Mera dismissed her cadre and closed the door to the corridor. "None of them did, heard, or saw anything, and yet we're down a general." She went to the infirmary windows. "Those are certainly wide enough for escape." She reached up and tugged at the hardware, which finally yielded with a harsh scraping sound.  "Was he in any shape to get out this way?"

"Possibly,"  I said as lifted a tray of glassware and began setting out my evaporating dishes. "But _why_ go out the window when he could have gone out the door?"

"Well, put yourself in his place," Mera said as she pushed the window open and leaned out to check for possible escape routes. "He wakes up in a strange room, doesn't recall passing out, has no idea how he got there. Maybe he thought he was being held prisoner, and so didn't try to leave by the obvious exit."

"Well, would the guards would have told you if he did?" I asked. "I mean, what if he ordered them to close their eyes? Then they wouldn't be lying when they said that they didn't _see_ him."

Mera laughed. "True, I didn't cover that possibility in my interrogation questions." She leaned back in and bent low over the sill and the floor beneath it, then closed the window. "I don't know if they would tell me, honestly. I haven't been here long enough. The half of them that aren't terrified of me don't take me seriously." She refastened the latch, then went to examine the other window.  "I don't think Zamura could have reached the ground from either of these windows unless he had a rope. Or could fly." She frowned and looked around the room. "I wonder if there could be a secret passageway…" She went to the panel to the right of the door to the corridor, took out a small knife, and began to poke carefully at the decorative moldings. "What's most vexing is that without Zamura we have nothing."

"Not true." I went into the bedroom and retrieved the strands of hair and the sample jar.

Mera's eyebrows went up. "You can work with that?  I'm impressed."

"We'll see," I said, shaking the jar.

.

Some hours later I had finally filtered and clarified the sample enough to distill out a droplet of something that my instinct told me was poison.

"So that's it?" asked Mera I showed her the dark red liquid.

"I'm not sure yet," I said, "but I will be." I covered the dish with the droplet and set it aside, then started assembling a stand for a second alembic. "So your information access is limited?"

"Yes, despite promising me before I agreed to come here that they'd give me anything I needed," Mera said. "I guess the Kaddiswalis still consider me a spy."

"But they invited you!"

"Doesn't matter. I get the impression they consider _every_ visitor a potential spy. What information are you looking for?"

"Local poisons are often derived from local plants," I said. "Do you think they'd let me borrow a few compendiums on native Kaddiswali plants and trees? Or is that information of strategic importance?"

"I don't see how it could be. Anything else?"

"I could also use some maps in case I want to go out gathering. And transportation. And any research they've done on poisons," I added. "Sometimes the most interesting ideas are tucked away in obscurity."

"Those might be trickier," Mera said, "but I'll try."

.

While Mera went off to request compendiums and maps, I started the process of turning one droplet into a hundred. There were various replicating compounds that I could coax from specific tinctures, but the tiny quantity of the source I could spare for each test meant it would take days to see which of them was successfully synthesizing more of whatever comprised my mystery droplet.

I had just finished digging through the herb basket and setting out the barks and grasses I needed for the tinctures when there was a knock at the infirmary door.

As I had a feeling that Mera's interrogation meant the guards would be extra-vigilant about admitting anyone, I took the covered dish with the precious droplet and put it in my lucky hiding place in the bedroom, then hurried to open the infirmary door.

A person with bright red-brown hair stood in the corridor with their back to me. It wasn't until they turned around that I realized it was Salai.

She was, it seemed still in costume. Her rose-petal skin had been re-tinted to a startlingly vivid orange-gold, bright as a sunkiss daisy. She'd dyed her hands as well. The long headdress of the night before had been exchanged for a short cap of rust colored leaves spotted with yellow, and the leafy ball gown had been replaced with a high-collared, long-sleeved white tunic and white leggings. She still had inky eyes and green lips.

I should have found this type of affectation ridiculous in the light of day, but instead it was… well, it was delightful. Where the Lady Salaisuus in the Grand Ballroom had been solemn, the Salai in my infirmary looked playful. Just looking at her made me feel foolish. I almost groaned to realize how quickly I'd become smitten, and wondered what she'd look like tomorrow.

"I… I came to see how the general was doing," she said.

"He's not here," I said.

"Oh?" She tilted her head and leaned to try and look around me into the infirmary. "Am I interrupting your work?"

"Not really."

"Would it bother you if I watched you?" she asked. "I really don't have much to do during the day." She ducked her head and gave a sort of abashed half-shrug. "I'll be quiet, I promise."

"It'll be boring," I said. "I'm just making tinctures."

"Oh, but I would love to see that!"

I glanced over just as one of the vainglories — and I _knew_ he was a vainglory, no need for Mera to tell me which was which— rolled his eyes.

"Sure, come inside," I said to Salai, giving the eye-roller an arch look. "I don't mind at all."

.

"Ah, that's amazing!"

Making each tincture was a simple matter of putting my fingers into a bowl of solvent, holding the source material in my other hand, and then silently invoking Kavisto in order to channel. It was the most mundane of the _rohto_ techniques, but for some reason Salai seemed to find it wondrous.

I decided not to explain to her what I'd be using the tincture for, however, as I had a feeling that setting up the tests was going to take more concentration than I could muster at the moment.

"Do you like the way I look today?" she asked suddenly.

I hesitated. On the one hand, I did. On the other, I wanted to see her as she was, not hidden behind wigs and makeup. And on the third hand, I accepted that some people needed masks for their own reasons. "I do," I said, cleaning my hands with fresh solvent and then setting up another bowl. "I'm just more accustomed to seeing flowers in a garden or a vase. Not walking around."

"So you like flowers?" she said, moving to stand closer to me.

"Yes," I said. "Very much." This close, I was struck at the absolute artistry and realism of her wig-maker, because the leaves truly looked as though they were growing from her scalp.

She propped her elbows on the table and put her chin in her hands.  "How do you feel about… flower beds?" She looked over at me with the sweetest smile.

I was almost ready to kiss her right then, pale green lips or not.

She pushed her sleeve up so that her yellow-orange forearm was bare, then held it next to mine and said, "Your skin is such a beautiful brown color. I think we go together like sun and earth." She stroked her hand over my arm. "A flower would love to slip into such a bed, stretch its roots, uncurl its sepals, arch its stem…"

She was absolutely seducing me, which was fine, because I was absolutely ready to be seduced.

And it was as if a cloud outside had passed over the sun, or a light inside of her had gone out, because she literally _dimmed._ She moved away from me and bowed her head. Waiting. _  
_

I was about to ask what was wrong, but I heard voices and footsteps in the corridor. An instant later Mera and Lady Viha entered.

"There you are!" Viha said, hurrying to Salai and putting an arm around her. "I was so worried!"

.

Lady Viha had apparently gone to the guard post because she thought Salai was missing. The guards had sent her to the ministry building where Mera had gone to request the materials I'd asked for, and Mera had brought her here.

Unlike Salai, Viha was all business today. Her dark red tailored dress was similar to the one worn by Zamura's wife, although Viha's had a slit down the center from neck to waist that showed flashes of pale skin when she moved.

"I was looking for General Zamura," Salai told Viha, "but he is not here."

"Oh?" Viha looked from Mera to me. "You discharged him?"

"No," I said.

Viha had no response to this. She began to turn Salai toward the door. "Let's go, Salai. You promised to help me with that little project, remember?"

There was something about Viha's tone that put my teeth on edge, or maybe it was Salai's obvious reluctance to go with her. Or maybe it was because I was annoyed that Viha was dragging my sunkiss daisy away.

I looked at Mera, and bless her, she understood. "Before you go, Lady Viha," she said casually as she put an armload of maps and large books on the table, "perhaps you can help us by answering a question or two?"

Viha stopped, and then turned back around. She put her arm through Salai's and pulled her close. "Of course. How can I be of assistance?"

"Did General Zamura do or say anything odd to you or Lady Salaisuus last night?"

"Why do you ask?"

"We'd like to trace his movements, perhaps compile a list of who he interacted with."

Viha gave a small shrug. "I saw the general speak to a number of people, but I didn't make particular note of them. And I hardly kept track of him all evening. He has an aide. Imar something. Perhaps he will remember more?"

"But you did speak to Zamura?"

"Yes?"

"When?"

"I don't recall the exact time."

"Why not?" I asked.

"For the same reason I can't tell you if he was eating or drinking anything at the time," Viha snapped. "When everyone is eating or drinking it's not something you take note of. Now, if the general had spilled his drink on me, or if his appetizer had burst into flames, well, I would have remembered _that._ And possibly noted the time. Is that all?"

I noticed that Salai was smiling faintly. Her black eyes glittered.

"Thank you," Mera said. "That's all for now."

They left.

Mera looked at me. "Is that what you wanted?"

I sighed. "I don't know. I just wanted… she seemed… " I waved a hand, trying to articulate. "As if she didn't want to leave."

"Fallen prey to your charms?"

I made unnecessary adjustments to some glassware.

"So, these books," Mera said heartily, slapping the top of the stack.

"It's just—"

Mera waited.

"I can't figure her out." I grabbed my head. "It feels as though she's three different women in the space of an hour!"

"Welcome to love."

"Ava's not like that?" I teased. Mera's wife Ava, who was a retired protector, was honest and gruff. She was also legendary among the Greenwardens for having kept a demon swarm at bay for four days with only her broadsword and a stack of incantations.

Mera laughed. "She's work. But she's worth it. That's how it goes most of the time." She patted the stack of books, her face serious. "Is she worth it?"

I sighed. "I don't yet know enough about her to say."

"Then I guess you should find out."

"If only I had someone well-connected…" I said, twirling a curl of hair as I looked up at the ceiling.

Mera grinned. "Alright, I'll see what I can do. Anything specific you want to know?"

"No, nothing specific," I said. "Just… everything."

_._

_._

.

.

###### A Warning

I spent the rest of the day distilling the tinctures and setting up the tests. In between, I went through the books and maps that Mera had brought.

Compared to Kyraxos, which had several climate zones and a correspondingly large and varied botanica, Kaddiswal as a whole was mostly desert and arid mountains. What flora there was tended to be thrive along riverbanks, in brackish marshes, and in the Matala Basin, the ancient alluvial plain that spread out from the capital city.

By the end of the day I'd identified 17 plants and trees of interest.

Mera arrived with dinner as daylight began to fade.  We pulled two overstuffed chairs and a small table out of the furniture pile in the garish, echoing room, then ate the strange unfamiliar food and drank glasses of a mouth-puckering wine. When we were done we unrolled the maps on the floor, weighted the corners down with our empty glasses and dishes, and started trying to match the locale descriptions in the compendiums with places on the map.

When we were done we'd identified a promising location, near where a cascade from the western barrier mountains—called, unimaginatively enough, The Barrier Mountains— entered the Matala basin. According to the books the area was home to five of the plants on my list.

"Less than a third of a day there and back," Mera said, running her finger over the roads on the map. "That should give you several hours at least to search for specimens." She paused. "Are you going to take Salai with you? Lots of time to talk and get to know each other on the trip out and back."

It was an option that hadn't occurred to me. "Maybe. She did say that she has nothing to do during the day, but I have no idea where she lives in the palace. If she even lives in the palace." I looked at Mera. "You didn't happen to come across her address yet, did you?"

"Not yet. I can't look her up without her citizen number, so I've mostly been combing the palace logbooks in hope that she'd signed in somewhere. I sent out luncheon invitations to the few contacts I've made, but so far none of them have got back to me."

"You'd better not plan to accompany me, then," I said, "in case any acceptances come through."

"I wasn't planning to come with," Mera said. "Do you expect trouble?"

"No," I said, pulling a face. "It'd just be nice to have someone to talk to. Even if I'm not flirting."

"I'm so happy I'm bonded," Mera said with a grin. "I'll be sending two guards along with the driver. Any preferences?"

I shrugged. "No. Peachfaces, I guess."

"Alright. I'll send them to get you just before first light. Sleep well."

"You can't stay a little longer?" I wheedled.

"As much as I'd like that, I better go and arrange your travel," she said, starting toward the door, but before she reached it she stopped, turned, and said in a whisper, "I'm going to send one of the vainglories in to collect our dirty dishes. They _love_ scullery duty."

.

I came awake with a start.

A faint red streak floated in the darkness at the foot of the bed. To either side of it were brighter red flecks, as if the sparks about a fire had been frozen.

"Who's there?" I demanded, my pulse thundering in my throat.

"Me." The voice came from the general area of the lights.

"Salai?" I pushed back the coverlet and crawled down to the end of the bed. This was a little bolder than I'd expected her to be, but I wasn't going to complain. I reached out below the lights and touched cloth, moved my hand and found her arm, then followed the arm down to the wrist, pulling her gently to urge her to join me on the bed.

She hissed. " No!" she whispered angrily. "I'm not here for that! I'm here to warn you!"

I let go and sat back on my heels. "Warn me? About what?"

"Just—promise me you won't leave the palace today."

"Why?"

"You're … planning to go somewhere with… water and rocks." The words were choppy, as if she was fighting to get them out. "There's a tree with… blue flowers. Vines. They break and… you fall."

"I don't understand." I slipped off the left side of the bed and groped my way around toward her. "What's this about?"

"I—I can't explain more." She was backing away from me into the other room.

"Salai, please," I said, following. "Talk to me."

There was enough moonlight coming through the infirmary windows for me to see that she was wearing a dark, cowled garment with long sleeves. The glowing lights were on and around her face.

"Stop!" she whispered angrily. "Don't come any closer. I might hurt you!"

"Why would you hurt me?" I asked. I reached out for her, but she twisted away a cry, and her cowl fell back.

The playful sunkiss daisy look was gone. Now she was a stormfury with haggard features, her dark grey skin the color of thunderclouds at night. Her hair—or was it yet another cap of leaves? Was she disguised day and night?—was dark blue-violet.

She yanked the cowl back up over her head with a black-gloved hand. "Let me go. I've got to get back. _Please._ "

"Go," I said, and she hurried to the door and slipped out without a sound, leaving me anguished and naked and without answers.

.

.

.

.

###### Reed goes gathering

After that, there was no way I was going to sleep. There were only a few hours until first light, I decided I might as well get ready.

First I got dressed in the field gear that always traveled with me: a sleeveless thermal bodysuit, boots, a sturdy vest with a dozen pockets, and cuffed shorts with tool loops and yet more pockets. The perfect thing to wear for climbing trees and wading through muck and scrambling over rocks.

Next on the checklist: double-checking my collection basket.

The double-strapped basket, designed to be worn on my back, was a much smaller version of the round, chest-high basket that contained my _rohto_ herbarium. Pockets lining the inside of the collection basket contained a special gel to keep the roots of whole samples viable, while the bottom was lined with moisture-absorbers for drying leaves and flowers. Netting suspended beneath an opening in the lid would catch the samples as I tossed them in and hold them until they were sorted. Straps on the outside secured various trowels and pruners.

Everything looked properly prepped and in order, so I sat down, planning to go over my notes and page through the books I hadn't looked at, but instead my mind kept circling back to Salai.

How had she known I was planning to leave the palace today? It seemed far-fetched that she'd figured out what I meant to do simply from seeing the books Mera'd brought in, but I supposed it was at least possible. But why did she want to stop me from leaving the palace?

And what was that _"I'm afraid I'll hurt you"_ all about?

I put my head in my hands.

And yes, I was entirely sidestepping the fact that I was interested in a person who'd stop to put in a costume and makeup before paying me a visit in the middle of the night… though I had to admit that _that_ part, at least, made some sense. When sneaking around, dark clothing and face and hair would help you blend into the shadows.

Although, if Salai was trying to be stealthy, why did she put glowing paint in her hair and on her face?

.

I must have dozed off, for I was startled by a knock on the door.

The driver was a vainglory. This was an unwelcome change from what Mera had promised, especially since I immediately got the impression that he assumed that he'd be lording it over worshipful lesser beings—in other words, the peachfaces and myself—but I assumed nothing could be done.

I shouldered my collection basket and hoped this wasn't going to set the tone of the day.

Based on the number of sideways glances he gave me as we walked through the palace, he found my outfit unacceptable, but at least he kept his mouth shut. And a good thing, too, because I certainly didn't have the energy that early in the day to share my opinions about the choices of clothing for women in Kaddiswal. Among other things.

After a traversing a maze of ever-narrower and more poorly-lit hallways and stairs, we passed the palace kitchens and exited into a small courtyard. The air was chilly, and the night sky above hadn't yet begun to give way to day.

The wagon was the second unwelcome surprise. I'd expected something like the Matkahuolto's wagon, well-made, enclosed enough to be warm. Instead, it was an open cart with sides barely two-hands high and asymmetrical wheels that looked as if they would fall off as soon as we started moving. As if that wasn't enough, the cart was harnessed to what looked like four rocks.

The vainglory hopped in the driver's seat, and chuckled as the two peachfaces squeezed into a space behind him so narrow that they had to sit sideways at either end and interlock their legs in the middle.

And then all three watched as I climbed into the cart and settled myself on the least-splintery spot, which they seemed to find amusing.

As we pulled out of the courtyard—the rocks apparently had legs—I wondered if there was something in the food or water that made certain Kaddiswalis so rude. I couldn't imagine growing up in this society; other than Salai, all the women I'd met—well, all two of them — seemed so scarred I wished there was some way to scoop up the lot of them and take them back to Kyraxos.

And then I decided that, for the moment, I was going to set aside things I could do nothing about and focus on finding _something_ to enjoy.

Once we got outside the palace proper and into the outlying town, this was easier to do. I could see the gradual lighting of the sky; I could smell the scent of baking bread every few streets. I heard birds and cats and dogs going about their business.

The buildings gradually became smaller as we passed from the business districts into the residential districts, though the size and number of houses dwindled fast. Finally we were passing through burnt-out ruins of charred timber and toppled stones.

One of the peachfaces reached out as if to touch my shoulder, but stopped when he saw he had my attention. "See that?" he said, pointing to the last of the ruins. "That's Kaddic's Wall."

The stones were bigger, and some of the sections still standing were taller, but overall it wasn't very impressive. "That's where the name Kaddiswal comes from?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Did it work?"

The peachface looked at me blankly.

"The wall," I explained. "I assume it was defensive. Did it keep out what it was built to keep out?"

He looked as if I had asked a blasphemous question, but didn't answer, so I dropped it.

Past the ruins the sounds dwindled until only insects and the creak of the cart were left.

As the sun came up the landscape was briefly golden, and then quickly bleached to a lifeless, dusty tan interrupted only by stunted shrubs. As we continued to travel west the road, which had been paved inside the city and had transitioned to gravel some distance before the ruins, gradually devolved to faint tracks in the dirt. I wondered what would happen once even those faded out, but a short while later we reached a crossroad marker and turned north, toward the aptly-named Barrier Mountains.

The road continued to rise, and it didn't take long before the dust and scrub was replaced by a carpet of tough yellowgrass, and then by taller rippling grasses and short, friendly trees similar to those in Mireli province, where I'd been born.

We kept going, and the forest edge began to take over from the grassland. Trees, ever darker, ever taller, stretched back toward the base of the barrier cliffs, a wild, brooding sulky expanse that reminded me of the vast forest that surrounded the Greenkype. Above, the white zigzags of the cascade seemed to split the cliff-side.

The vainglory stopped the wagon, then turned to announce that we had arrived.

I bit back the urge to say something along the lines of, "Thank you, I wouldn't have noticed!" then climbed down from the cart and began to stretch out the soreness from sitting while surreptitiously picking splinters out of my legs and backside.

The peachface who had pointed out Kaddic's Wall looked as though he might like to go with me, but from the bedrolls and the basket of food next to the driver—which he had not offered to share with any of us—I had the impression that the vainglory expected the other two to watch over him as he ate and napped.

I pointed. "I'll be back before the sun reaches the top of that tree."

The peachface nodded, then after a quick glance to make sure that the vainglory wasn't watching, slipped a small sheathed hunting knife into my hand.

"Thanks," I said, turning away so that I could put the knife in a vest pocket.

Perhaps there was hope for the peaches after all.

.

The Kaddiswali botanical compendiums were very good at enumerating and illustrating various species and varieties, but their other information seemed lacking. _Floats in pools of water near Barrier Cliffs_ didn't seem terribly helpful. The floor of the forest was dry leaves and the occasional moss; the various streams were too swift-running for floating vegetation (and as it was most of them quickly disappeared underground) while the pools at the base of each cascade were noisy churns of foam.

However, as I got closer to the cliffs I saw a series of half-hemisphere outcroppings that skipped up the rock face like handholds for a giantess, and when I had climbed up to the first one I was delighted to discover that they were indeed natural basins in which floated round, rubbery leaves with a filigree of yellow veins. One of the plants on my list, something called Lesser Pillowleaf, it was said to yield a numbing agent that was lethal in larger doses. (I was curious what Greater Pillowleaf did, but none of the books mentioned it.) Even if pillowleaf wasn't the source of the mystery droplet, I decided to gather some every time I saw it. The Arboretum was always looking for additions to their collection, and the anesthetic properties sounded as though pillowleaf would be useful in procedures like bone-setting.

I kept climbing, steadily gathering samples of anything that was unfamiliar but interesting. Aside from the pillowleaf I hadn't seen any of the plants I was looking for, but I didn't mind so much. Being outside in the sunshine and fresh air, with breezes blowing and birds singing and insects flying lazy arabesques, was a refreshing change from the overstuffed artificiality of the palace.

It was too bad that Salai wasn't here, to see how wonderful it was.

Was that why she had been so frantic the night before? Did the fact that I hadn't told her where I was going make her worry that if I left I'd never come back? Or maybe she was just worried about my safety?

I smiled.

As I started pulling myself up to the next basin I let myself daydream a little. I pretended that she'd come back while Mera and I were eating dinner, and when I'd asked her if she wanted to come along she'd said yes, and then in the morning she was waiting for me next to the cart. No makeup, no costume, just her honest self.

I started thinking of how nice it would be to while away an afternoon in the forest below, just the two of us, hunting for berries and exchanging stories and  running through the tall grass laughing as it started to rain…

And then I stepped on a loose rock. As I started to fall to the right I twisted to the left, landing on my left side in the basin I'd just passed, which had been dry and pillowleafless.  

I moved everything gingerly. My elbow and the side of my leg had nasty scrapes, and I was soaking wet, but fortunately nothing was broken or sprained. I checked the basket, which had taken some of the impact. It had a diagonal crack, but I was able to repair it somewhat with the lengths of twine I had in a vest pocket.

I looked down, but the wagon wasn't visible. Not surprising, since it had stopped at the edge of the forest. I leaned out as far as I dared and surveyed the climb above me. From what I could tell, I was two-thirds of the way up this particular cliff, though I couldn't see the top.

I certainly didn't see the point of going back down the way I'd come, as there'd be nothing new to collect, so I decided to climb to the top of this section of the cliffs, move sideways as far as I could, and then descend a different path.

_"You're… planning to go somewhere with… water and rocks."_

Well, it didn't mean anything. Rocks and water were everywhere.

I was safe as long as I avoided blue flowers and vines…

.

"I still don't understand why you can’t you heal yourself," I heard Kaddic's Wall say. "Aren’t you one of those witches?"

He was close to me, to one side, but I wasn't about to move my head just to give him a withering look. The clouds above were vibrating, and their sunset pinks and reds were fading, which meant that soon I'd have nothing pleasant to look at.

"I explained this already," I said. "I can only heal others. Not myself."

"That's weak." The vainglory's voice came from further away, past my feet. "And stupid." There was clattering and the creak of metal hinges. "I think this is a splint," he said. There was a rattling noise. "Someone put it on her so we can get her in the cart."

I was about to point out that I hadn't _asked_ for his opinion, about Greenwarden _rohto_ practices or anything else, and wasn't at all interested in _hearing_ them, but then someone took hold of my leg, and I passed out.

.

It had taken me longer than I'd estimated to reach the cliff-top. Partly because I was tired, partly because I was being overly-cautious so as not to fall again, but mostly because I'd decided to take an angled path for fear that the basins and handholds directly above me were too eroded to be stable.

I was nearly to the top when I reached a deep vertical crack in the cliff that I hadn't seen when traversing. Too wide to cross, not deep enough to wedge handholds and footholds. It was, however, home to a very sturdy-looking vine.

I frowned. The reasonable thing was to not think about what Salai had said. The vine was nearly as thick as my wrist, looked healthy, and had barbs and runners for traction. The other option was to backtrack.

I grabbed the vine. It wasn't quite as stable as I would have liked, but the connection between the vine and the tree that was hosting it seemed very solid.

My heart started beating a little faster than usual, but that helped me reach the top more quickly. Once I was there I sheepishly thanked the tree and the vine for helping me out, then considered where to go next. I could either descend, go further up, or move west along the ledge, as the tree blocked the ledge to the east. The ledge itself was wide, thick with scree, and terminated at a narrow rivulet, but on the far side there were plants I hadn't seen on my way up.

West it was.

Crossing the rivulet turned out to be easier than I thought; the rocks were slippery, it was true, but the current was weak and I was careful.

Two of the plants on the far side looked like those on my list: a type of sparkgrass with unique seed pods, and a dense clump of small yellow flower. I gathered as much of both as I could, dropped them over my shoulder into the collection basket, when I saw sheets of airy moss hanging like dark green lace from vine runners.

I was so excited that I stepped forward to reach for them without checking my footing.

My boot came down on nothing and I pitched forward. I grabbed at the vines; as they broke in my hands I saw a flash of blue.

.

.

. 

.

_concept 25 Sept 2018  
first post 12 October 2018; rev 7 Apr 2019_


	2. Detective and Killer

.

.

###### Mera's report

"Well, that was foolish." Mera was looking down at me. Past her head I could see the crystal chandelier of the infirmary. And also morning sunlight, which meant I'd lost an evening and a night.

"Someone's got to use these beds." My voice came out in a croak. "No one touched my dishes, did they?"

Mera looked puzzled for a moment, then shook her head. "Oh, your poison tests on the table? No."

"Did my basket—"

"Your basket is fine. About as banged up as you are, though you have more bruises."

"But you have to put the roots—"

"Yes, the roots go in the gel, I know. I've been around taitaja long enough to know how protective you are of your plants." She smiled. "Now tell me what happened."

"I… really don't remember." I said. "I reached for this amazing epiphyte and then… " I tried to shrug, which made me wince. "And then there were clouds and talk about splints, and now I'm here."  

"Well, I have to tell you, whatever happened certainly impressed the boys. The peaches can't stop yammering about how amazing you are."

"Yeah, I'm amazing." I tried to sit up, but couldn't get my muscles to obey. "Why can't I move?"

"The Kaddiswali doctors have been using the pillowleaf you brought back to keep you still while you slept. It should wear off soon."

"How soon?"

Mera shook her head in mock exasperation. "Seriously, Reed, slow down a little. Plants are rooted, your experiments are safely covered, and if our assassin sticks to their previous schedule we have at least eight days before they attempt another poisoning."

An idea struck me. "That's it," I said, frustrated that I couldn't gesture my excitement—and that I hadn't figured it out before. "That's why the assassinations come every ten or eleven days. They're… they're _making it_. It's something that doesn't keep, so they have to make it fresh each time. It must take them ten days to cook up each batch."

Mera nodded thoughtfully. "That makes sense." She glanced over at the table. "When your dishes are finished doing whatever they're doing, will it tell us what the raw ingredients are?"

"It might." Is that why Salai hadn't wanted me to investigate the local flora? Because she knew someone who was making poison from it? "Mera, there's something… it didn't seem important at the time, but it does now," I said. "Salai came to see me the night before last. Somehow she figured out that I was going on that collecting trip, and  tried to talk me out of leaving the palace." I didn't think the threats or the weird semi-prophetic comments were relevant, so I didn't mention them.

"That's odd. Your fall _was_ an accident, wasn't it?"

"Yes," I said. "Of that, at least, I'm certain. Have you found out anything else about Salai?"

Mera sat carefully on the edge of the bed. "Not much. While you were out yesterday falling off cliffs, I lunched with society gossips and dug through official records. Lady Salaisuus became a palace darling a little more than a year ago. She's credited with the trend of wearing outlandish costumes to social events. And Lady Viha wasn't joking the other night; it seems Lady Salaisuus actually _hasn't_ been seen to eat or drink in public; it's one of the things frequently noted about her. Apparently at first some people thought she was a vampire, but that rumor didn't get much traction. The general thinking is that it's due to illness or an extremely tight corset."

 _"This_ is the quality of information you dug up for me?"

"But I haven't yet told you the speculation about who does her makeup!" Mera didn't wait for me to protest. "The prevailing theory is that it's not makeup at all, but some sort of drug." She shook her head. "Seriously, though, could that account for her eating habits? Or the changes in skin color?"

"An illness or sensitive digestion is a more likely cause for loss of appetite," I said, "and it's doubtful the chameleon skin colors are from a drug. My guess is a plant-based reactive dye. There are dozens of species here that the Greenkype has never catalogued." I exhaled heavily and tried to wiggle my fingers, to see if the pillowleaf had worn off enough for me to move.  "Anything else? You said you finally got into the official records?"

"The Citizen Registry was about as useful as the society gossips," Mera said. "There's no official information about her family or where she's from."

"She's not Kaddiswali?"

"No. I've seen references to a variety of backgrounds: Farm girl from the Middle Provinces, only child of a bankrupt aristocrat from a place no one's ever heard of, orphan from a huge family sold to buy food… she's a complete mystery."

"So that's that."

"How much do you like her?" Mera asked.

Oh, that question didn't bode well. "More than I should, apparently."

Mera was quiet for a moment, then said, "I have a hunch there's a lot going on under the surface. She seems like a wounded creature trying to hide."

"Then why deliberately call attention to that surface with orange body paint and ridiculous wigs?" I asked. "That's not a good way to hide."

"Not everyone tries to melt into the background when they have a painful or sketchy past," Mera said.

"Or maybe she just likes toying with people," I said, feeling more and more bitter. "A cat playing with a mouse."

"I wouldn't go that far," Mera said. "She strikes me as capricious, not cruel. The type that isn't aware that they're demanding everything without giving anything back."

 _No, she's the type that tells you they don't want to hurt you, just before they do,_ I thought as I closed my eyes. "I think she's our poisoner," I said, "or she's working with them. At the very least she knows who it is. All we have to do now is catch them in the act." Scalding tears of disappointment welled up in the corners of my eyes.

Mera held my hand for a while, then left so quietly I didn't even notice.

.

.

.

.

###### "So you're curious about me?"

When I woke up I could move again. I sat on the edge of the bed and swung my leg to rest my foot on the window sill to inspect the mending-brace. I had to admit that the Kaddiswali healers had done an exceptional job, and wondered if it was acceptable to ask to meet and thank them in person.

Probably not.

I hobbled over to my table and checked the dishes. Two had created a noticeable amount of new liquid, but neither matched the color of the mystery drop.

I sat to think. If the poisoner was making a new batch every eleven days, it was possible that they were using materials more easily obtainable than the plants I had traveled to gather yesterday.  "I wonder…" I muttered.

It was time to check out the palace gardens.

I maneuvered into the bedroom and, after some effort, put on my travel robe and my boots. Next, I transferred all but the most crucial items from my herb apron to the chair I was using as a bedside table. Finally, I picked up and shook the wrinkles out of the Kaddiswali tabard and put that on as well. Hideous, but wearing it might earn me some points.

Then I hop-walked to the table and gathered up my plant lists, a small blank notebook, and a writing stylus.

There was a guard outside the infirmary door.

"Taitaja Reed." His look and tone were almost polite, although I was pretty certain that he wasn't one of those who'd accompanied me the day before.

"Is there is anyone who could give me a tour of the palace gardens?" I asked. "Kaddiswal has many unique species of plants, and I'd like to make an informal study of them." When he looked hesitant I added, "If no one's available and the gardens are accessible to non-Kaddiswali, I don't mind wandering around to look at them myself."

This request was clearly not covered in the handbook, but after a moment he pointed. "Down there, turn right. Follow the cloister around. Side passageways  branch off to the inner gardens."

"Thank you." I started to limp in the direction he'd indicated when he cleared his throat and added, "Do you require assistance?"

"No. I'm good," I said, then turned away before he saw me grinning.

I like to think the tabard helped.

.

He'd referred to them as "inner gardens," which, as it turned out, was precisely literal. There were a number of gardens off the cloisters, but the first one I came to was not only tiny, but surrounded on all sides by high windowless walls that seemed to be sneering down at me with disapproval for even existing.

I hurried back into the cloister, and then steeled myself to enter the second one.

Since I now knew what to expect, the second garden didn't seem so stifling. It occurred to me the gardens might be one of the few places in the palace where two women could speak in private, or just be alone, and after that I began to appreciate how lovely they were. Every one had at least one small bench; a few had tiny fountains. The plants were perfectly placed and well balanced in terms of visual appeal, and I wondered who designed and tended to them.

The gardens also, to my delight, had a wider variety of plants than I expected. I wondered if I could ease out a few samples to take back to Kyraxos. Although I wasn't seeing any of the plants on my list, each of the first three gardens had different plants, so there was hope. I moved on to the fourth.

The fourth garden was paved with decorated tiles, incised with lines of text that probably were short poems although I didn't recognize the language. I awkwardly bent to take a rubbing to show to Mera, when I realized I was no longer alone.

Today Salai's skin was the same shade of brown as mine, although with a faint greenish cast. Her leafy wig of chin-length, slightly spiraling leaves was a rusty color that nearly matched my coils. As for her clothes, it seemed as though she was trying to imitate what I'd worn the previous day: cuffed shorts, boots, and a vest with pockets that could have been stolen from my bedroom. Under them she had a skintight bodysuit that was either transparent or dyed to match her skin tone. And she had definitely padded her chest, because her breasts were noticeably larger than they'd been during our previous meetings.

I was angry because I wasn't sure if I was being mocked, but as this was also Salai's best look yet _,_ I couldn't decide which way to tip the scale.

"What do you think?" she asked. "I did it for you." As if to make certain that I had noticed, she smoothed her hands down over her chest.

"It's a look," I said as dryly as I could. I was thinking maybe I'd go with anger after all.

"You don't like it, do you?" she asked. "Why not? I thought if I was just like you, you'd like me more."

"No, Salai," I said. "Even if you looked exactly like me we'd be nothing alike." I moved away.

"It took me a long time to get it right!"

And now she was trying to guilt me. "What you sacrifice in the name of fashion is your own business."

"Sacrifice?" She was stalking after me, placing each step in the center of a tile. "Are you concerned about my welfare?"

"Don't read into it," I said. "I do it for everyone, whether they deserve it or not. It's my calling." I decided that by continuing to move away from her I was playing her game, so I stopped and acted as if a dark-leaved shrub was the most fascinating thing I'd ever seen—as a little voice in my head was shouting that it was very foolish to turn my back to a suspected murderer.

Salai came up behind me. "Don't you like flowers anymore?" she asked softly, rubbing her hand on my waist and pressing a breast against my arm.

"I told you before," I said, "I like flowers just fine. In a garden. In a vase." I broke off a small sprig of the shrub and put it in my notebook. "Not walking around pretending to be people." I turned to face her.

She stepped back, looking utterly shocked. Then her eyes half-closed  and she asked, in a sultry purr, "And flowerbeds?" She smoothed her hands over her belly, making a triangle of her fingers to frame her crotch. "How do you feel about flower beds? If I buried myself in you, would you give me enough moisture to flourish?" She curled her fingers. "I'd do it for you."

I was insulted anew. Did she really think she was that irresistible? Did she seriously think that I'd cast aside all caution and start drooling? Granted, I was still attracted to her even though I was pretty sure she was a killer or at least a killer's accomplice, but I had a feeling that she knew this, was in fact banking on it, and that type of smugness irritated me. "Doubtful," I said turning away, and then, because I always gravitate to the truth even when a lie would probably make things easier, I said, "I'm not in favor of helping murderers flourish."

"Murderer?" she said. "Has someone been murdered?"

I realized immediately it had been a stupid thing to say. Sure, it was possible that knowing Mera and I were on to her would goad her into doing something rash, but if that happened it would be pure dumb luck and not because I was good at manipulating people. I was a pathetic liar who was now going to have to play the game where Salai would pretend not to have heard what I said, and I would pretend not to notice that she was pretending.

Well, all I could do at this point was try my best.  "We think General Zamura, and before him, Trader Distellia. Surely there have been rumors in the Palace about the people who have disappeared?"

"People are always arriving and leaving," she said. "What does it matter? I've heard that Zamura and Distellia were bad men. Isn't it better that they're gone?"

"No one has the right to kill another person just because they think they're bad," I said. I was beginning to feel trapped in the small space, and so I moved toward the archway to the cloister.

Salai casually moved between me and the exit. "Tell me," she asked, "if you could strike at someone you knew was a killer of children, would you let them live? How about someone who was planning to start a war that would kill thousands?  Or someone who is making changes to grain allocations that will make them money, without caring that will cause hundreds of families to starve? Would you truly let such people live? "

"There are other ways to stop them," I said. I didn't like that she was blocking my escape.

"So to you one life is equal to a hundred thousand?" She scoffed. "What nonsense." She took a step toward me, as if trying to intimidate me into backing away from the exit. "Yes, taking life is regrettable, but if the result is that by taking one you save many, then to me the killing is justified."

"How many lives do you think you'll save if you kill me?" I asked. My voice and hands were shakier than I would have liked them to be.

"Kill you?" She seemed genuinely surprised. "I have no interest in killing you, Taitaja Reed. I _like_ you. Even if you don't like me."

"Then let me leave the garden."

"Of course." She stepped to the side, out of my way, but as I passed her she grabbed my arm. "Be careful when poking blindly into that which you cannot see. Sometimes you awaken serpents."

"I don't like being threatened," I growled, pulling my arm away.

"Who does?" Salai said.

Her silvery laugh echoed down the corridors all the way to the next garden.

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###### Salai's secret

I spent the next few days sorting, testing, and documenting the plants that I'd brought back from the Barrier Mountains and the palace gardens in a vain attempt to stop hovering over my test dishes.

The tiny biochemical factory on each dish was now making enough liquid each day that I started pouring the excess off into sample tubes, but none of the individual liquids appeared to be a match for the dark red mystery droplet. This wasn't surprising, though: most poisons are very complex compounds, with individual components that are often toxic in their own right. I did do one additional experiment—I didn't expect it to be successful, but I was impatient to move my investigation forward—and combined a tenth of a drop from each dish to see if I'd isolated all the components from the mystery sample. The resulting droplet was not only a bright amethyst, but gave off fumes that stank up the infirmary for an hour.

Salai stayed away, which was good. I didn't want to see her.

No one came to check on my leg, but it seemed to be healing and the pain continued to be bearable.

The morning of the third day, Mera came in and bent down to peer at the rack of holding the tubes of jewel-toned liquids I'd accumulated. "Any luck?"

"I'm not looking for luck," I said. "I was looking for results."

"Was?" she asked, straightening up and folding her arms. "Are you giving up?"

"No," I said. "But I've gone as far as I can with this limited equipment."

"You need something like the labs in the Arboretum."

"Yes," I said, "and I should go back to Kyraxos today, since we might have only a few more days to stop the killer before they strike again."

"I haven't seen Salai around the past few days," Mera said carefully. "Did something happen?" 

I told her. All of it. I didn't want to, but I had to.

"That sounds rough," Mera said.

"Yeah, well at least one good thing came from it," I said. "I learned I was right about her using costume changes as a diversion. She wants her targets to think she's harmless so that she can get close to them." I said.

"The mark on Zamura's neck," Mera said slowly. "She must put the poison on her hands; that's why she wears gloves. But wasn't there something in his stomach contents as well?"

"What if whatever was in his stomach reacted with whatever was absorbed through his skin?" I said, carefully transferring Zamura's hair samples into an alembic. "With each compound non-toxic until mixed in the body." I could imagine it as clearly as if I'd been there. "Salai flirted with him, poured something in his drink. Probably told him it was an aphrodisiac."

"And if it is something that is harmless alone, then it wouldn't matter if the goblets got mixed up and the wrong person drank it," Mera said. "It would just mean that she'd have to try again before she… touched his neck"

I appreciated that Mera had tried to avoid conjuring up the image of Salai pressing her hand against the back of Zamura's head as she kissed him, but I'd already pictured that, and gotten over it. "It probably never occurred to Zamura that she was his killer." I added solvent to the alembic. "It probably hasn't occurred to any of them." I stirred the mixture and lit a low flame under it.

"We have one more avenue to investigate," Mera said, "Lady Viha seems pretty close to Salai. We should talk to her. She must know, or suspect, what Salai is doing."

"Maybe that's why she keeps such a close watch on her," I said, adjusting the flame beneath the alembic. "To Interfere whenever she can."

"If Viha co-operates it could get us the evidence we need," Mera said. "I'll talk to the Consuli and see exactly what we need to do to make sure our poisoner doesn't escape Kaddiswali justice."

I had a moment right then, despite knowing that Salai had killed or tried to kill a dozen or more people, where the idea of turning her over to "Kaddiswali justice" made me feel ill.

"Reed?" Mera was watching me.

"I'm all right," I said. "I'll go talk to Lady Viha."

"Alright," Mera said. "I'll meet you there once I'm done with the Consuli."

.

The guard outside my door, a vainglory I hadn't seen before, offered to show me the way to Lady Viha's residence.

For all her bragging about how she had the king's ear and that he would see her any time, Viha's residence was not, as I had expected, located in an upper terrace close to the palace, but two levels below the infirmary, in the Fifth, in an area that looked more like a grain storage district than an area where valued advisors lived, and from the outside looked as if it had once served as a manufactory.

"Should I wait for you, Taitaja Reed?" the vainglory asked. "To escort you back to the infirmary?"

"No need," I told him. "Protector Mera will be meeting me here later. I'll walk back with her."

"As you wish." The vainglory bowed briskly and left.

It was a little odd to be treated so politely, but perhaps it was respect for my, I don't know, physical resilience or something?

Inside Viha's burgundy-painted front door was a long unlit hallway. As my eyes adjusted I could see dim light spilling from an unseen source at the far end, and walked toward it. As I got closer to the light I heard someone talking, though I couldn't quite make out the words. At first it sounded angry, short, harsh barking sounds, but then it became quieter, longer sentences, as if the speaker were trying to reason calmly.

The voice stopped, and I froze. An instant later there was a sharp, snapping sound, like a long wooden slat pulled away from the frame of a house and then allowed to snap back, followed by a low, quiet sound that made the hair on my arms stand up.

My heartbeat started pounding like drums in my ears. I hadn't brought even a knife, and there was no time to go back, or run back outside and see if I could enlist the vainglory to help.

I had to do it myself.

I stayed in the shadows against the left-hand wall as I neared the end of the hallway. Around the corner, to my right and across the intersecting corridor, was an opening to the room that was the source of the light. The left-half of the opening was covered by a hanging slatted door, so I edged forward until I could see between the slats.

A large metal washtub. In it, a large cube of metal mesh, functioning as seating for a person-sized creature. The creature was sitting at an angle to me, so all I could see was its back and left side. Green-skinned with dark green mottling and moderately well muscled, it had elaborate fins at every joint, and a row of what looked like golden discs spaced down the center of its back. The creature's head was covered with a heavy cloth sack, and its left arm seemed to be attached at the wrist to the mesh cube it sat on.  

In the quiet, I noticed dripping sounds.

I was about to step around the door to investigate further when I was startled by Lady Viha's voice, very close by.

"I know that you understand what's at stake." She had been standing inside the room, out of sight to the left of the doorway, only an arm's-length away, but came into view as she began to walk toward the creature. She was wearing a stylish Kaddiswali dress, but over it was a long leather apron and what looked like elbow-length blacksmith gloves. She held a long wooden pole with a blunt metal hook at the end. "Give me what I want, and I'll make sure no one hurts her," she said softly.

My unease was growing, but I cautioned myself to wait a little longer and try to understand a little more of what was going on before I barged in.

Viha moved noiselessly, circling around to the far side of the creature. It twisted its head, as if trying to track her movements.

The dripping continued. Both figures were motionless for thirty heartbeats or so, and then, suddenly, Viha brought the pole down across the creature's thighs with all her might.

It shuddered, and there was a splash in the basin.

"Better," Viha said. "But not enough. You need me to put the fire in you, don't you?"

The creature shook its head vehemently, and made muffled sounds of distress.

I'd seen enough. This was looking like torture, and needed to stop. I had no weapon, so I couldn't brute force it, but Mera could. All I needed to do was interrupt Viha and stall until Mera arrived.

I took a deep breath, then stepped around the door. "Lady Viha! I hope you don't mind the interruption?" Play along, stay calm, engage her in conversation.

"Taitaja Reed! What a pleasant surprise!" Her expression, however, wasn't a match for the words.

The creature went completely still.

"I've never seen anything like it," I said, sternly ordering myself to pretend that there was nothing wrong here. "What is it?" I crouched down next to the basin, glancing at the creature's front. Flat chest, no nipples, no navel, and what looked like two overlapping leaves over the crotch. This close, I could see that the leaves, as well as the decorations I'd taken as decoration and armor plates, were part of the creature's body. What _was_ this thing?

As I watched, drops of clear fluid began to gather on its fingertips.

"My pet," Viha said. "Not very well trained, I'm sorry to say. A bit high-spirited. Needs frequent reinforcement as an incentive to behave."

The creature began to tremble, and the dripping from its fingertips increased.

I wished Viha would take the hood off so that I could see its face. The noises it was making made me suspect that it was gagged. "You're collecting its sweat?"

"Something like that," Viha said. "It's a very valuable compound."

I was pretty sure I didn't need to ask what the compound was for. If this creature was secreting a key component of the poison, no wonder I hadn't been able to analyze it.

"Interested in its anatomy and biology?" Lady Viha asked. "I'd be happy to give you a tour."

"Are you sure?" I asked. "It seems—" I almost slipped up and said _terrified_ — "dangerous."

"Not if you know how to handle it." She turned away and went to what looked like a small kiln, then added with a chuckle, "By the way, don't handle it." She turned back a moment later with a metal rod in her other hand, its tip glowing red-hot.

"What are you going to do with that?" I asked, queasy with revulsion as I stared at the heated rod. I was certain I knew the appalling answer, and, weapon or no weapon, if it looked like Viha was going to go that far I was going to stop her, whether Mera was there to back me up or not.

"Routine maintenance. Part of the tour." Viha tapped the creature's crotch with the pole. "Come on now, don't be difficult."

There was a choked whimper, and then the leaves curled back.

I had expected that beneath the leaves would be, I don't know, stamens or a stubby green penis bud or the like, but instead I saw an irregular vertical gap that looked like the center of a halved geode, but in green flesh instead of stone and crystal. Inside were hundreds of pale green filaments with violet tips, undulating like wind-swept grasses in a miniature field. It was weird, yet also beautiful.

"Wait," I said.

Viha gave me a cold look. "Don't be squeamish. Farmers burn fields all the time. It enriches the soil."

"But farmers grow crops to feed people," I said, desperately. "This isn't the same."

Her eyes became even colder "Oh?"

I heard the metal sound of the door to the outside — good, Mera was here. I only had to keep this going a little longer. "I realize it's for a good cause," I said carefully, thinking of the comments Salai had made in the garden, "to rid Kaddiswal of bad people, but tormenting this creature to make… this substance for you—it doesn't feel right."

Viha laughed. "You think I'm _forcing_ her? I'm not. She makes her poison for me willingly."

"But this!" I gestured at the restraints, the blindfold, the hooked pole, the heated rod.

"Her body just needs a little encouragement at times," Viha said, pointing to the trickle of clear liquid dripping from the gash.  "If you don't believe me, ask her yourself."

Viha pulled the sack off the creature's head, and even though she was green, with rows of wickedly curved thorns growing from her skull—and they truly were _growing_ from her skull—I recognized the shape of her face. It was Salai, gagged with a green-stained wad of cloth.

Even though I'd been telling myself and Mera that Salai was involved in the poisonings, I was stunned to discover that I was right.  

Viha tapped Salai with the pole. "Grow them," she said. "So she knows it's really you."

Two nipple-less mounds began to swell on Salai's chest.

It was horrifying and heartbreaking all at the same time. Salai was a murderer, and yet all I wanted to do at that moment was take the rag out of her mouth and comfort her.

I turned to Viha. "Why?"

"How dare you ask me why? Do you have any idea what it's like to live in Kaddiswal?" she demanded. "Of course you don't. Kyraxos doesn't have men, does it?"

"Not many." I heard someone in the hall, and turned, but it was only the vainglory that had escorted me to Lady Viha's. "Is Protector Mera here?" I asked hoping against hope.

"She's right behind me," he said.

"Prepare _refreshments,"_ Viha told the vainglory, then turned back to me. "My apologies. We should have had some ready." She threw the vainglory a frosty look, and he hurried off.

"As I was saying," Viha continued, "Unlike Kyraxos, in Kaddiswal, unless she is willing to live her life in the tiny interstices allowed her, a woman has to fight every waking hour of every day to avoid being trampled and discarded."

"There are other ways to undermine an oppressive regime," I started to say. "You could—"

"Who do you think selected most of Salai's targets?" Viha asked. "Do you think she was choosing them _herself?"_

"Who then? You?"

"The king chose the targets," Viha said, moving to throw the rod back into the kiln. "The king, or whoever most recently flattered him most, was the one to order the assassinations. I communicated the information to Salai, and she carried them out."

"What evidence—"

"I'm not stupid enough to show any of it to you," she said, "but, yes, I've kept it. Every list, every letter. Every scrap of paper with a name folded around a payment."

"Insurance. Just in case."

"Of course."

She was still smiling, a little, but I wanted to be careful. From what I'd seen, if she got angry, she'd take it out on Salai. "So you were just following orders?" I asked.

"Not always," she said. "Sometimes when I got impatient I'd pick a target myself, or let people know I might have a discreet way to dispose of problems."

"People who deserved to die?"

"Not that I have to justify myself to you," Viha said, suddenly enraged, "but yes, they _did_ deserve it, every one of them! Rapists, sellers of children, even worse scum! Besides," Viha said, pressing the pole under Salai's chin to force her to look up, "Why let any of this precious nectar go to waste?"

And that, I decided, summed up Viha perfectly. She probably started out thinking of herself as a hero of the downtrodden, justifying her actions by pointing to the powerlessness of women in Kaddiswali society, but she didn't see that by manipulating and using Salai, she had become little different than what she was supposedly fighting.

Salai glanced over at me as if she could hear what I was thinking. I darted forward, reaching out to pull the gag from her mouth, but I was grabbed from behind, and a cloth reeking of pillowleaf was clamped over my nose.

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###### The killer revealed

It was dark. I was blindfolded and having trouble breathing, as if my body had forgotten how to take anything but the shallowest of breaths.

I tried not to panic, and concentrated on inhaling and exhaling more deeply, trying not to think about what a terrible way to die pillowleaf poisoning would be. Drowning in a room full of air.

I was being carried, slung uncomfortably across someone's shoulders, but could not move. I hoped carrying me was as uncomfortable for my captor as it was for me. We were moving down a slight incline, but smoothly, which meant a sloped ramp instead of stairs.

I listened. I wasn't certain, but it seemed that there were multiple sets of footsteps, echoing slightly. An enclosed space? Indoors? It had been chilly outside, and in Viha's residence, but it was not chilly now.

We stopped. There was a rustling sound. A map?

"No, this way," a male voice said, startling me with the sudden sound. It wasn't the person carrying me.

"No," a second voice some distance in front of me said. "We went that way the other day when we—"

"Are you sure?" the first voice said with a petulant snap.

"Can someone lug the cow for a while?" the person carrying me said. If I could have, I would have bitten him, to show him that cows can chomp more than grass, but my jaw didn't work.

I was transferred, with much grumbling, to new shoulders, and we moved on.

The smells changed. Neutral air was replaced by an oily-industrial stink. Then there was a brief whiff of salt air accompanied by the sound of splashing, and then after a hundred or so steps a dusty, moldy smell as we went down a flat corridor that went on and on.  

"Stop," I heard one of the voices say. "She said we had to wipe our shoes before we went in."

There was a lot of rustling and grunting, and I felt a rush of fresh air as I was carried into a space that, from the change in the echoes, was much larger than whatever I'd just been carried through.

"Put her down there," one of them said. "Is she still breathing?"

"Yeah, still breathing."

The cloth was whisked away. I saw the chandelier in the infirmary.

Viha stepped into view. "You know, I really would have liked to have kept you alive," she said without preamble, "for my sake as well as Salai's. I kept her to myself for the first few years, but that became boring and unproductive. Letting her have her costumes and free run of the palace was an improvement, but it was nothing compared to how juicy she got once she met you." Viha shook her head. "And now I'm going to have to chain her up again, and it's all your fault. Sad, really."

No, it was disgusting, and I told her so. Not with my mouth, of course, because it wouldn't move, but I let my feelings burn in my eyes.

"Oh, don't give me that look," Viha said. "Being pruned, having its buds nipped back, all that's good for a garden. Salai _thrives_ on pain and misery. And you don't know her like I do. She likes obeying me, because it means she doesn't have to think for herself. That's why she collaborates so willingly."

Yeah, I thought, I saw how willingly Salai was cooperating.

"It's amusing. Her most fervent wish—well, before you showed up—was that I would kill her. She begged me to."

Of course she did, I thought. Her existence was horrifying. Death would have been a mercy.

"Said I was destined to do it," Viha continued. "How ironic that now you've become Salai's reason for living and cooperating, you're forcing me to kill _you._ It seems her destiny is to never get what she wants. If only you and that hulking protector hadn't poked around in my business so much!" Viha leaned down so far I thought she was going to kiss me. "I'll bet you'd like to know what I did to her, don't you?"

She straightened up, and then walked out of sight. I could hear the sound of paper rustling and glassware clinking. "All right. Let's see," she said. "Oh, this will be good. Bring her over her and sit her on that."

By "that" she meant the sturdy display plinth that I'd topped with a chair cushion to use as seating when I worked at the table, as I found out when two vainglories lifted me off the bed and held me upright on it. A third crawled under the table, removed my shoes, and arranged my feet.

Viha stood across the table from me and, after pointedly pulling on a pair of gloves, placed the rack of poison components I'd distilled precisely in front of me. Eight corked tubes, each as long as my hand and as wide as two fingers, each now filled halfway or more with a toxic liquid I'd distilled. She removed one tube from the tray, moved an alembic behind and slightly to the side of the rack, and then tipped the alembic forward so that it crashed into the tubes.

"Oh, how clumsy of you!" Viha said.

The glass portion of the alembic and all seven tubes in the rack shattered on the marble surface of the table. Their liquids pooled and began creeping inexorably across the tabletop toward me.

The pillowleaf was fading, but not fast enough. I couldn't move as the liquid reached the edge and began to drip down into my lap and thighs.

"Put her hands on the table, then let go," Viha said.

Unsupported, I first pitched face forward, then fell half under the table, knocking the plinth aside in the process.

The poison drips were now hitting the center of my chest, sending occasional splatters up to the underside of my chin.

Idly, I had to hand it to Viha. She knew how to stage a murder scene, although it was lucky for her that I was wearing only a shirt. If I'd been wearing the Kaddiswali tabard, her plans would have been foiled, because I doubted anything could penetrate that brocade.

There was a creaking sound on the other side of the room. A panel opened in the sliver of wall that I could see, and something dark and formless moved into the room.

"So you've learned to escape those restraints as well?" Viha said. "Impressive."

"I like a challenge," the newcomer said in a voice was as cold and emotionless as Viha's. "Is she dead yet?"

"No," Viha said. "But soon. It seems that the witch has had a little accident. Her scientific curiosity got the best of her."

"Oh?"

"Yes," Viha said. "Apparently she drank this, and then knocked over half her equipment."

I wished I could see what they were doing. The pillowleaf was starting to wear off, because I could feel a burning sensation on my thighs where the toxins had dripped, but I still couldn't move my head.

"Make sure to wrap her hand around it."

I heard the pop of a cork being removed from a tube.

There was a rustle to my right. From the corner of my eye I saw Salai kneeling down next to me. The eighth tube was in her hand.

Salai lifted my right hand, folded my fingers around the tube, and then, intent, bent low over me as she slipped her hand under my head to lift me a little.  As she raised the tube to my lips she whispered so quietly that I barely saw her lips move, "If you seized us both, could you use your magic to channel the essence of my poison into her?" She was pouring the contents of the tube against the corner of my mouth in such a way that nearly all of the liquid dribbled down my cheek, past my ear, and across the side of my neck.

If I could have spoken, I would have told her no. Not just because I wasn't sure it was even possible, but because if she thought I would kill anyone, even Viha, she didn't know me very well.

But it seemed after all she did know me, for she said, "No, I knew you couldn't. Goodbye, my love." She pressed her hand to my cheek, wiping the traces of liquid from my face, then stood and turned away from me to face Viha.

"Here?" I heard her say.

"A little more to the left," Viha replied.

There was the sound of something shattering on the floor. "I will stay and do whatever else needs to be done," Salai said, and I heard a faint scraping sound, as if she had picked up a shard of glass. From the corner of my eye I could just see her at the end of the table, showing Viha something in her palm.

"Be careful not to contaminate the scene," Viha warned her. "We don't need Kyraxos sending any more busybodies."

"If she does not succumb, I will put the final dose of poison in a place they will not think to look," Salai said, and Viha's minions laughed unpleasantly.

"Goodbye Reed," Viha said, leaning over the table far enough for me to see her looking down at me. "You know, I actually _did_ like you. A little."

I would have liked to have said something snappy or brave at that point, or simply have told her to fuck off, but the burning sensation in my chest was becoming a conflagration, edging toward my frantically-beating heart.

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_Posted 12 October 2018; rev 4 April 2019_


	3. Heroine and Prophet

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###### Antidotes and Explanations

Do you know how poison works?

It's very simple. Once a poison gets into your body—through a stab wound or other puncture, by breathing it in, by eating or drinking it, or absorbing it through the skin—it makes it way into your blood. From there, it interferes with the body system of its choice. Your senses dim, your mind becomes disordered. Your heart starts to forget how to beat, and your muscles no longer remember how to move the bellows of your lungs. If the poison is too strong for your body to resist or recover from, you die. The most lethal poisons, those delivered by a bite or something in the air, kill in a day or less. Poisons swallowed or absorbed through the skin take longer.

I did not have a day, because I was fighting multiple attackers. Already my breathing was stuttering and I was feeling light headed and confused. At least the pillowleaf seemed to be wearing off, because I could feel burning sensations on my lips, chest, and legs where the poisons were soaking into my skin.

It was utterly quiet in the room. Had I imagined Salai? Suggesting I kill Viha? And then sparing me the eighth poison by only pretending to make me drink it?  Hadn't she told Viha she'd stay and finish me off? If so, where was she?

I must have imagined that as well.

My mouth was so dry I couldn't move my tongue, but I knew that if I licked my lips I'd be swallowing poison. Think, think… if I could remove my toxin-soaked clothes and get to to the ablution niche in the bedroom, I could wash at least some of the poison off.

A good idea in theory, except that I couldn't do anything but twitch my fingers a little.

The sudden staccato of footsteps startled me, as did the screech of the table above me moving out of sight.

And then Salai was looking down at me.

"Hey," I managed to exhale.

"I had to convince the door not to open," she said, which of course didn't make any sense. "Now I'm going to move you away from the broken glass."

" 'kay."

She shrugged out of her robe.

The light from the infirmary windows made the pattern of dark green on her legs and across her collarbones a mosaic of emeralds. I was mesmerized by this sight, which wt the moment was the most important thing that existed in the entire world.

Salai brushed at my clothes, kicked aside some fragments of glass that skittered away with a tinkling sound, then crouched down and lifted me up as if I was driftwood.

Red and black puffballs exploded before my eyes.

"I know you hate me," she said as she carried me into the bedroom, "but you should know that I understand now what you said the other day in the garden."

"Huh?"

"About one life being as important as a thousand," she said as she laid me on the bed. "At this moment I would kill a hundred thousand to save you."

I had no response to this.

"Did you swallow any of the poison in the tube?"

"Lil'." She was unbuttoning my shirt, but I didn't mind.

"I'm going to remove as much of the poison from your skin as I can. You'll have to swallow antidotes for the rest." She bent down and licked my cheek, the side of my neck, and my lips. Three times, each place. After the third time they stopped burning.

"Oh," I said as she started unfastening my pants.

"I'm not going to hurt you," she said.

"Trus' you." There was a weird ringing in my ears, and I felt light, as if I'd had too much to drink.

She bent down again, this time running her tongue over the underside of my chin, down the front of my neck, and down between my breasts.

After that it was easy for her to take my pants off, because I was weightless, floating above the bed. I felt her long—very long, much _much_ too long—tongue slither over my belly and thighs, then dip briefly between my labia.

"All tasted," she said.

If I hadn't had a boulder on my chest at the time I would have laughed.

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There are fuzzes and gaps in my memory. I can vaguely recall how she held me against the wall and scrubbed me down and rinsed me under the gentle spray, then pulled me back against her before turning it on full force. I can recall being increasingly annoyed as she turned me this way and that, letting water like needles assault my face, my neck, my breasts, my belly, my thighs, and then scrubbing with her hand between my legs, which only annoyed me when she stopped… hot, cold, too hot, icy, while underneath everything pinpricks stung me as the pillowleaf continued to fade.

One thing I do remember clearly, however, was that the cold water I drank from her cupped hand was the sweetest, most refreshing water I've ever had. It soothed my throat like my grandaunt's blue-root tea with peony honey.

And then Salai was toweling me off. I had just enough coordination to clutch the edges of the door frame as she knelt and licked my thighs again. "Better," she said. She stood and put her hand on my heart. "It beats too fast? And unsteady now?"

"Yeah."

"Difficult to breathe?"

"Must be… seeing you… naked," I managed, and smiled weakly.

"This tells me you'll live," she said. "Dead people do not joke."

My grip on the door-frame was failing, so she put an arm around my waist and let me lean on her as she led me to the bed.

I pointed to the Kaddiswali coverlet, and made a flicking motion with my fingers.

Salai understood: she grabbed it with her free hand and, with complete disdain, tossed it onto the floor.

"Much better." I leaned forward, intending to crawl onto the bed, but then I was on my back, with Salai on all fours above me.

I was a little disappointed that she'd reabsorbed the breasts that Viha had forced her to grow, but she was a goddess whether she had them or not, a moss-dappled, thorn-headed goddess with wide hips and ebony eyes. I lifted my hand and brushed my fingertips against the fanlike leaves covering her sex organs. The leaves, still damp from the shower, had a velvety texture that invited stroking.

If I was going to die, this was certainly not a bad final moment.

"Not time for that yet," Salai said. She leaned back on her heels and smoothed her hands over her head, covering the thorns with glossy, tiny leaves that looked like dark green ringlets.

"What'z it time for?" I asked. My tongue was still making my words clumsy.

"Antidote," she said. "You ready?"

"Sure," I said. I wondered if I should mention that the boulder on my chest had invited a friend.

She stretched herself out carefully on top of me, matching our bodies thigh to thigh and belly to belly while supporting her upper body on her elbows.

I wanted to pull her face down to mine, but my arms were too heavy.

Still, she knew what I wanted, and leaned down to kiss me. Her mouth was soft and full and smooth and oddly wet. Her tongue, which I could feel was definitely _not_ shaped like mine, swept around the inside of my mouth, coating it with something slicker than saliva, then flicked deep down my throat, withdrawing so quickly I didn't have time to gag.

A goddess, I reminded myself. She was a goddess.

And then she began to slide against me. Suddenly slippery with sweat, she pressed her lips against my cheek and then traced the drip line down my neck. When her nose grazed the hollow below my ear I sighed, because the only thing keeping this from being a perfect moment was that my arms, my weak, still non-functional arms, would not obey my brain and wrap around her back and pull her closer. Her leafy fans seemed to hum as they rubbed over my mons, and suddenly all the places my skin had been burning in a painful way started tingling in a good way, a _really_ good way, and my much-improved throat made happy, hungry, needy noises, because right then I wanted her to flourish until the bed was covered in petals.

Salai stopped. "Am I hurting you?"

"No," I said. My voice was ridiculous and gravelly and growly, but at least my tongue and teeth and jaw were finally working the way they were supposed to.

She looked surprised, and then she smiled. "Feeling a little better?"

"Yes." And I did, actually. True, I was still feeling weak and shaky, but I knew my body, and this was much more a Salai-based weak and shaky than a toxin-based weak and shaky.

"The last antidote is done," she said. "I have done what I can for your surface. You must do the rest, to counteract what has already made its way into your blood. Are you ready?"

I was a little bit confused, but said yes.

Salai rolled off me onto her back, then propped herself on her elbows and spread her legs. "Lie down in between," she said. "On your side, with your head on my leg."

"I, ah, want to do that, but I need help."

"Still so weak?" She shook her head and pulled me so that my shoulders were in the center of the bed, then rolled me on my side and positioned my top arm so that my hand was near my face. "You made too many different poisons in those tubes." After thus arranging me to her satisfaction, she carefully fitted herself around me and then moved my head to her thigh.

"Hm." My mouth was a little further away from the fans and what they covered than I wanted to be, and my arms were limp.

"Your tongue is not long enough," Salai said, once again as if she was reading my mind. "You will have to use your hand, and then lick your fingers."

I managed a smile. "Oh, I know how to do that," I said, concentrating on sliding my hand across the sheet toward my goal.

Salai sighed. "I wish I wasn't so impatient to have you touch me," she said.

Amazing how much incentive I gained from hearing those few simple words. As my fingers reached the fans they curled away. For one instant I thought of the horrors that Salai might have endured under Viha, and worried that I would revive painful memories for her.

And then her insides started to glow. I had found the sight beautiful before, but now I was astonished. The violet tips of the pale green filaments were faintly luminescent, and each was topped with a tiny dewdrop.

"The last antidote," Salai said. "Take it from me." She pulled her free leg up and bent her knee to open herself wider, then shifted her hips at an angle that would better match the angle of my hand.

It was the sexiest thing I'd seen in a very long time, and I started to throb in empathy. I put two fingers inside her, stroking across a swath of spheres. A liquid, sticky and thick as honey, coated my fingertips.

Salai clutched at the sheets. "Taste it, Reed," she whispered.

I managed enough coordination to bring my hand to my mouth, then sucked and licked until my fingers were clean.

I had no name for what it tasted like; it was sweet and salty and sour and savory and bitter, and yet none of those. It sent a ripple through my mouth and across my body, and even though it was almost certainly my imagination, it seemed to instantly clear my head and steady my heartbeat. The fingers of the hand that had touched Salai lost their weakness; strength swept up my arm the way sun races over a landscape when wind blows a cloud out of the way.

The second time, I carefully fit my hand nearly to the wrist, and caressed until my fingers and palm were dripping and Salai was trembling, moaning encouragement in a language I did not understand.

The third time, I used just my fingertips on the now-dropless filaments, barely brushing against what seemed to be like nothing so much as a tiny field of clitorises, and was rewarded by seeing Salai's eyes begin to blaze, first a dim white, then a bright yellow, and finally a nearly blinding green. As the light began to ebb the—I supposed it was pollination chamber—began to contract. As soon as I pulled my hand out, the fans unrolled to cover it.

Salai gave a long, satisfied sigh. "And now, my love, tell me what I can do to pleasure _you._ "

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Some time later, having given her a full lesson in my anatomy, Salai and I lay contentedly entwined. She seemed particularly fascinated with my nipples, playing with them until they puckered, then waiting for them to unpucker so that she could tease them again.

"What did you mean," I asked, similarly taken with her ears, which were like half-unfurled roses, "when you said you had to convince the door not to open?" I wondered if this was just for people trying to get in, and pictured Mera's puzzled expression when she—

I bolted upright. _Mera._ I had forgotten all about Mera.

"Mera," I said, reaching for my last set of clean clothes. "She said she was going to talk to our Consuli and then meet me at Viha's residence." I put on my herb apron, making sure that the essentials for wound treatment were still in the pockets. "I won't forgive myself if Viha — "  At that moment, if Viha had been before me, I think I would have become violent.

"Calm yourself," Salai said, retrieving her cowled robe from the floor. "We will find her."

"What if it's too late?" I knew my voice sounded accusing, but I couldn't forgive myself for letting Salai make love to me while Mera was off somewhere at Viha's mercy. "What if she's bleeding to death somewhere right now?"

"I am nearly certain that Viha has no plan to kill your friend," Salai said, "only hold her out of the way so that she cannot rush here to save you. And even if Viha does plan to kill her, she would not be reckless enough to kill her on the same day that she thinks she has killed you."

"Why not?"

Salai said. "Because your death is much easier to pass off as an accident."

"Wait, what does that mean?" I asked. "That my death is easier to pass off as an accident?"

"Mera is a warrior. And she does not play with poisons," Salai said slyly.

"Oh." Alright, it made sense. Guilt receded somewhat, and my heart danced a little. "That's true, she doesn't." I licked my thumb at her, and then dug through my vest pockets for the knife the peachface had given me.

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The infirmary door was gone, as if it had melted into the surrounding wall.

As I gaped Salai went to the secret panel. "This is the quickest way to Viha," she said.

"What if Mera was waylaid before she reached Viha? She could be anywhere between the Second Terrace and the Fifth!"

Salai turned to me and put her hands on my shoulders. "Listen to me. Even if your friend was ambushed on the way to Viha, the attackers would not have left her there to give the alarm. They would have taken her to Viha."

"That doesn't make sense," I said. "Then Mera would know who was responsible!"

"No," Salai said. "Protector Mera will have no idea where she is. Viha keeps those she takes within her domain, but feeds them false information to protect herself."

As worried as I was, I admitted that this made sense.

We raced through the tunnels. When we reached the stone steps that led up to a trap door, Salai said, "Wait here. If Viha is there, I will tell her you are dead and try to find out find out where Protector Mera is."

"And if they don't tell you where she is?"

"Then I will return to you."

After what felt like an hour, the trap door opened. A head was silhouetted in the light, and a familiar voice said, "You coming up or what?"

It was Mera. She had cuts and scrapes on her face, and there were smears of blood on her armor, but otherwise she seemed alright. "Salai's up there." She pointed toward the shadowed ceiling high above, where a dark shape was edging along a suspended beam. "She said that Viha tried to kill you."

"She did. If not for Salai I'd be dead. Now sit on that bench."  I dug herbs from my apron and began to tend to her. "Tell me what happened to you."

"I was going down some stairs between Fourth and Fifth Terrace," Mera said, "when I met some fellows who said they didn’t like my kind. They sprayed me with something that turned all my muscles to a pile of string, the cheaters, and then they gagged me and tied me up. After that there was a disagreement about what their patron wanted done with me and who was going to get to keep my sword and so on, and then they dragged me out of sight behind some crates, and left."

"They stole your sword?"

"I got it back. Found out where Zamura went, too. Or is going."

"Where?"

"Bellies of the local fish."

There was a soft crunching sound behind me as something hit the floor. I turned to see Salai holding a rolled map case. She had traded her robe for a close-fitting dark tunic and trousers. The thorns on her head were bare.

I turned back to Mera as Salai moved to stand next to her. "And?"

"And their knotwork was so bad a child could have undone it," Mera said. "so I freed myself and followed them here." She took the case from Salai. "Viha ran as soon as I started the attack."  She unrolled the case, which was full of various papers. "Yes, these will be very useful. Thank you."

"What are those?" I asked.

"The originals of Viha's 'insurance.' "

"Why didn't Viha take them?"

"She thought did," Mera said, rolling the case back up and tucking it inside her chestplate.

"Before I came to the infirmary to rescue you, I made copies," Salai said, looking extremely pleased with herself.

I must have looked puzzled, because Mera said with a grin, "Lady Salaisuus has a very interesting set of skills. Have you forgotten that paper and ink can be made from plants?"

"Oh!" I said. "Now what? We go arrest Viha, right?"

"We can't do that quite yet," Mera said. "And we have an issue to deal with first." She folded her arms. "Lady Salaisuus made me promise that, as a reward for helping us, I'd lend you my sword so that you could have the honor of killing her."

I stared at them, aghast. Viha had claimed that being put to death was Salai's greatest wish, but I'd assumed that was nonsense. "That—that's—Mera, we're not going to do that!"  

Mera gave me a Look. "Lady Salaisuus assured me that when you got here she'd explain to us why it is something we _must_ do for her." Mera turned to Salai. "I suspect that Taitaja Reed has more pieces of your story than I do, so perhaps you'd start at the beginning?"

Salai pressed her hands together, then began to talk. "I emerged from the Seed far from here, the chosen one of my grove to carry the curse of prophecy."  

"Prophecy?"

_A tree with… blue flowers. Vines. They break and… you fall._

"When I was very young, I received a vision that I would die at the hands of a stranger, among strangers. My people wanted me to stay with them, so I would be safe."

"So why didn't you?" I asked, feeling anguished. "Why did you come here of all places?"

Salai began to pace. "Constantly seeing that those I cared about were going to be hurt or die, and yet unable to say anything to save them… I could not stand it. So I determined to go far away. I chose Kaddiswal because I had heard it was a cruel, heartless place."

"A way of hastening your prophesied death," Mera said quietly. "How did you come to associate with Lady Viha?"

Salai stopped pacing. "My people release defensive poison when we are threatened or afraid. The day I arrived in Kaddiswal I was attacked in the marketplace. I panicked and killed my attacker. Lady Viha saw me."

"And saw the potential of using you and your poison," Mera said.

"Yes. I agreed because it seemed the best way of getting myself killed quickly."

I felt numb with shock. "Because you were in a strange land, surrounded on all sides by strangers."

Salai hugged herself. "Yes. But Lady Viha refused to kill me. I was too valuable to her."

I looked at Mera. "Viha tortured Salai to make her release poison."

Mera didn't say anything, but by the way she tightened her jaw I knew what she was thinking.

"After a few years Viha said that she would allow me to walk free in the city if I continued to do as she told me." Salai looked down. "I agreed. I was weak, and I had not seen the sun, or any living green thing, in so long."

I stood up and went to her, wrapping her in as comforting an embrace as I could. "You were desperate," I said. I stroked her thorns, and when one scratched me  long leaves begin to form under my hand.

"And then I met you," she said, "and I could not bear it. I begged Viha to kill me, but still she refused." Salai knelt and took my hand. "Please, Reed. Release me from my curse. Burn me to ash so that I cannot not grow back. I do not want to be used by anyone else."

"We can't do that," Mera said. "It won't fulfill the prophecy."

"Why?" Salai's voice was raw with despair. "You are strangers here, as am I—"

"We can't fulfill that prophecy, even if we wanted to," Mera said, "because we're no longer strangers. We're friends."

"Why not defy the prophecy?" I said. "Living takes courage, but I think I can give you something for the pain. I am, after all, a healer."

And as I stroked the side of her face and I kissed her, with a joyous rustle her leaves cascaded down over our shoulders until they reached the floor.

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###### Epilogue

A riverbank, in the sun. All around, shades from palest yellow green to deepest malachite, leaves and branches and stalks and buds and mosses and needles, were woven together by light and rain on the loom of earth.

If you knew where to look you might see two reclining under that riotous coverlet. One, brown and golden, with full lips and kind eyes, was a fallen tree, inviting greenery to clamber over her; next to her, half-clambered, was a being of new-leaf and spring bark hue, her head covered with long glossy leaves that swept back from her forehead like a phalanx of green spearheads.

I was the brown one, and I had my arm around her shoulder. As my fingers stroked the spotted lenticels on the side of her neck, she nestled closer and slipped her hand inside my half-open shirt to lazily play with my breast.

"It still surprises me that these tiny circles can give you such pleasure," she said.

"I don't know how it works either," I murmured. "More research is needed."

Nearby, a nearly invisible four-footed animal—a small feline with disturbingly large red-rimmed eyes—began to chase a dragonfly. Salai's rhizome group had given it us when we arrived, although I was not clear whether it was the same pet she had had during her first season, or the ghost of that pet, or one of its descendants. "Does it have a name?" I asked.

"Does it need one?" she asked.

"No."

We made small adjustments to fit together more comfortably as the murmuring of the river and the drowsy rasps and buzzes of insects lulled us toward sleep.

"Protector Mera has returned to Kyraxos?" Salai asked.

"She has." I looked forward to sitting down with Mera at some point and hearing the full story of what had happened in Kaddiswal after Salai and I escaped, of what she had told the Ministry of Truth, and whether Viha had been found, but for now I was content that thus far there had been no indication that Kaddiswal planned to use the investigation as a pretext for declaring war on Kyraxos. I still half-wished I could have magically swept up all the Kaddiswali women and taken them with us, but I knew such fantasies accomplish nothing. Wastelands are not transformed overnight, but by the patient sowing of seeds and tending of new growth.

"Do you want to return to Kyraxos as well?" Salai asked softly. "Your entire past is there. It is your home."

I could hear in her voice that she had already resigned herself to an unhappy ending for our story. Understandable, given what she'd been through the past few years, but I hoped that, in time, she would begin to trust happiness. "I'd like to show you the Great Forest and the Greenkype some day," I said, "and introduce you to my friends and family and woodlands, but,"  I moved my head to better look at her, the amazing wonderful strangeness of her, "as long as we're together, wherever we are will feel like home to me."

She made a soft happy noise, and then sat up. Stretching and arching her back, as if to make sure I noticed she had breasts, she opened the vest that used to be mine to let me see that she'd grown tiny dark-green succulents for nipples.

I couldn't help but admire such gleeful showing-off. "And if I ever get bored with you, I can always put down roots somewhere else," I teased.

She narrowed her eyes. "Bored?"

A moment later she finished clambering, and after that no words were spoken in the glade for quite some time.

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_**~The End~** _

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_Posted 12 October 2018; rev 6 June 2019_

**Author's Note:**

> (c) 2018
> 
> For those who might be confused by the eleventh-hour-and-fifty-fifth-minute appearance of the eldritch kitten, my excuse is that the recipient had the following throwaway line in their prompts: _"thinking about it, I would totally be interested in eldritch and/or super-villainous kittens and/or cupcakes..."_ As I happened to have [a source](http://ajelo-draws.tumblr.com/) for eldritch kittens, I got one.
> 
> Names in this story derived from Finnish (and a big thank-you to **Mipeltaja** , my language consultant): _Salaisuus_ —secret or secrecy; _Viha_ —anger, hatred, vitriol; _Turha_ —useless; _Distella_ —from _ahdistella_ , molest, accost, persecute, badger, crowd; _Sir Lahettilas_ —from _suurlähettiläs_ , ambassador, envoy. (Bonus: according to GoogleTranslate, _lahettilas_ is Estonian for "laundromat," which, if true, seems amusingly apropos in the "dealing with dirty laundry" sense.)
> 
> The previous story set in this universe, The Taitaja, introduced Mera and her wife as supporting characters. 
> 
> If you have a moment, let me know what you thought of the story—I love hearing from readers!


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